Nothing but awesome movies this week.
Red Cliff is epic Woo. The drama is as over the top as the action. Which is as it should be. Lots of shots of dudes staring off into the distance. Lots of mulling, contemplating, introspection. But also lots of grand gestures. Lots of musical instrument playing. Lots of knowing smiles. Everything is so big. So big. Even the little moments.
But then there is even more goodness. The females in this movie are actually important. They contribute to the plot. They have character. They're not just pretty and helpless. And the planning! The counter planning! Epic battles as chess!
I loved this film. I had a smile on my face for basically the whole run time. Which wasn't as much of a problem as I had feared. I saw the American version, the two and a half hour version, not the four hour two part version. But the cuts weren't obvious, the film still flowed fine. It wasn't all just action chopped together willy nilly. But I look forward to watching the super long version just for more Woo-y goodness.
Woo!
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is insane. It starts out kinda kooky, then veers into its own special version of a typical police procedural, then it goes shitballs retarded. Just gloriously unhinged. Which is helped enormously by Nic Cage's performance. After this movie, you'll wonder if he was actually partaking of all the drugs he takes onscreen. Cuz I don't think Herzog would have a problem with that.
The day after we (friend and wife and me and wife) saw this film, my friend texted me "I think I love that film." I had to agree. We texted back and forth about all sorts of awesomeness. And we decided that Nic Cage is best when he is paired with a filmmaker as insane as he is. This film is a match made in heaven.
But it's not a film for everyone. My wife almost walked out of the film. Whereas as I was giddy by the end of the film. And man, that ending. Man!
The ending may well be the worst part of Black Dynamite, but it had built up such good will with me that I didn't really care. And it has an awesome beginning. I was ready for a sequel about 15 minutes in.
This film is, of course, a spoof of the blackspoitation films of the 70's. The main problem with this film is that it veers between the sublime spoof of Wright/Pegg (Hot Fuzz/Shaun of the Dead) and the dated parody of Zucker Abrams Zucker (Airplane et all). The film was awesome enough that it didn't need to have boom mics visible in shots.
Black Dynamite, the character is awesome and he is well supported by the rest of the cast. And the music is just perfect. I want the soundtrack. I wants it!
I highly recommend all three.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
More Movies I Seen
Let's talk horror. I like horror. A lot. There is a lot of crazy stuff to be found. The lack of respect the genre receives frees the participants. Let's put the camera inside a torso and hack it open because fuck it, we ain't ever gettin no Oscar. Not that all films are so crazy inventive. Most aren't.
Within the last week I took in four films that can be viewed as horror films. They all have horrific elements at least.
The only one that I would out and out recommend is Black Sheep. Of all the different horror sub-genres, the horror comedy is my fave. Cuz bodily fluids are both humorous and horrific. Humourorific? I like the Kiwi accent, I love the New Zealand countryside, and I adore the creature effects by Weta. It's not all greatness. The leads are a bit bland, as is the villain. But people get gored by sheep. It's a simple joke, an obvious one. But I find that I like simple stuff that works.
Law Abiding Citizen doesn't work. Hardly at all. I mean it looks nice enough, the acting isn't laughable, this isn't amateur hour. Except it is. This story is laughable. But it isn't. Maybe you're sensing the problem here. Dude's family gets killed. Right in front of his face. That would suck. His lawyer goes for the easy conviction: one dude flips on his partner, he gets a couple years and his partner gets life. Why? Cuz the cops messed up the investigation? How? Fuck off, we've got people to kill.
The now non-husband/non-father goes crazy. A very deliberate kind of crazy. Which is helped by the fact that the non-husband used to figure out how to kill people for a living. He figures out how to kill everyone involved and then does. The end.
Yeah. There are all sorts of interesting ideas and arguments that could have been raised here, but aren't. Gerard Butler gets a rant or two about how he wants to bring the legal system down, but that's it. The film is not concerned with ideas, it's concerned with blowing things up. There is more though put into the Saw films. Which is basically what this film wants to be. But slightly more respectable. Notice I did not say better or any other qualitative word.
Daybreakers is somewhere between the above two. Some stuff works. But more doesn't. The Spierig brothers need better editors. The story idea is neat. Vampires have taken over the world. Humans are cattle basically. A cross between cattle and money. Blood banks takes on a very different meaning in this world. But the human population is dwindling. The blood supply is dwindling. And if vampires don't drink blood they go feral. So Ethan Hawke is trying to find a blood substitute.
He doesn't find a blood substitute. But thanks to Willem Dafoe and others in the human resistance, he discovers a cure. But does a world full of vampires want a cure?
Neat stuff in there. Mainly only given lip service, but it's not as damning in this film as Law Abiding Citizen because this one is about vampires and not the broken legal system. And there's some nice vampire-y stuff. The feral vamps are kinda scare-y. The blood bank boss is suitably slime-y. There's an daytime action/chase scene that makes good use of bullet holes and sunlight.
But then the Spierig brothers try adding in more stuff. Tensions between brothers, tension between fathers and daughters. Most of that stuff doesn't work. Nor does the music. It is way too over the top and loud. The jump scares are dumb. Basically screeching bats jump out from time to time. It's never scare-y, it's just always loud and annoying. The bat scares seem shoe horned in.
And the ending. Or endings. A bunch of stuff happens. In rapid, stupidly rapid succession. And then our leads drive off into the sunrise. For no reason other than the directors thought that it would look cool.
Which is the main problem of the flick. They did stuff because they thought it would be cool but it isn't always cool. A lot of it just ends up lame. But an enjoyable kind of lame.
Enjoyably lame is much preferable to just plain dull, which is what The Wolfman is. They were aiming for dread I suppose but they missed. It's just slow and boring. With lots of blood and dismemberment. It reminds me of reading American Psycho. The juxtaposition of banal detail and graphic violence was supposed to be shocking but it just made the violence as boring as the deadly dull in depth detail.
And the wolfman as a character, let's be honest, looks kind of stupid.
Within the last week I took in four films that can be viewed as horror films. They all have horrific elements at least.
The only one that I would out and out recommend is Black Sheep. Of all the different horror sub-genres, the horror comedy is my fave. Cuz bodily fluids are both humorous and horrific. Humourorific? I like the Kiwi accent, I love the New Zealand countryside, and I adore the creature effects by Weta. It's not all greatness. The leads are a bit bland, as is the villain. But people get gored by sheep. It's a simple joke, an obvious one. But I find that I like simple stuff that works.
Law Abiding Citizen doesn't work. Hardly at all. I mean it looks nice enough, the acting isn't laughable, this isn't amateur hour. Except it is. This story is laughable. But it isn't. Maybe you're sensing the problem here. Dude's family gets killed. Right in front of his face. That would suck. His lawyer goes for the easy conviction: one dude flips on his partner, he gets a couple years and his partner gets life. Why? Cuz the cops messed up the investigation? How? Fuck off, we've got people to kill.
The now non-husband/non-father goes crazy. A very deliberate kind of crazy. Which is helped by the fact that the non-husband used to figure out how to kill people for a living. He figures out how to kill everyone involved and then does. The end.
Yeah. There are all sorts of interesting ideas and arguments that could have been raised here, but aren't. Gerard Butler gets a rant or two about how he wants to bring the legal system down, but that's it. The film is not concerned with ideas, it's concerned with blowing things up. There is more though put into the Saw films. Which is basically what this film wants to be. But slightly more respectable. Notice I did not say better or any other qualitative word.
Daybreakers is somewhere between the above two. Some stuff works. But more doesn't. The Spierig brothers need better editors. The story idea is neat. Vampires have taken over the world. Humans are cattle basically. A cross between cattle and money. Blood banks takes on a very different meaning in this world. But the human population is dwindling. The blood supply is dwindling. And if vampires don't drink blood they go feral. So Ethan Hawke is trying to find a blood substitute.
He doesn't find a blood substitute. But thanks to Willem Dafoe and others in the human resistance, he discovers a cure. But does a world full of vampires want a cure?
Neat stuff in there. Mainly only given lip service, but it's not as damning in this film as Law Abiding Citizen because this one is about vampires and not the broken legal system. And there's some nice vampire-y stuff. The feral vamps are kinda scare-y. The blood bank boss is suitably slime-y. There's an daytime action/chase scene that makes good use of bullet holes and sunlight.
But then the Spierig brothers try adding in more stuff. Tensions between brothers, tension between fathers and daughters. Most of that stuff doesn't work. Nor does the music. It is way too over the top and loud. The jump scares are dumb. Basically screeching bats jump out from time to time. It's never scare-y, it's just always loud and annoying. The bat scares seem shoe horned in.
And the ending. Or endings. A bunch of stuff happens. In rapid, stupidly rapid succession. And then our leads drive off into the sunrise. For no reason other than the directors thought that it would look cool.
Which is the main problem of the flick. They did stuff because they thought it would be cool but it isn't always cool. A lot of it just ends up lame. But an enjoyable kind of lame.
Enjoyably lame is much preferable to just plain dull, which is what The Wolfman is. They were aiming for dread I suppose but they missed. It's just slow and boring. With lots of blood and dismemberment. It reminds me of reading American Psycho. The juxtaposition of banal detail and graphic violence was supposed to be shocking but it just made the violence as boring as the deadly dull in depth detail.
And the wolfman as a character, let's be honest, looks kind of stupid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)